Microlearning through TikTok in Higher Education. An evaluation of uses and potentials

While social media is evolving rapidly, understanding its underlying and persistent features with the potential to support high-quality learning would provide opportunities to enhance competence acquisition and collaborative work in higher education. Moreover, the adoption of tools that students already use in their everyday lives facilitates the integration of new forms of learning. In this context, we have developed an initiative to disseminate content through TikTok in three modules of the Bachelor's Degree in Nursing course, with the aim of promoting quality learning through these microlearning environments. To this end, we have implemented these learning environments and evaluated the users' perceptions, as well as their level of acceptance of the technology according to the Technology Acceptance Model. Overall, our results show high levels of satisfaction with regard to engagement and the content generated, as well as in terms of the acceptance of the technology. Our results do not show gender-specific variations, but we did detect slight variations depending on the subject in which the microlearning tool was deployed. Although for the most part these variations do not change the participants' assessment of their experience, it will be necessary in the future to determine the underlying reasons for these variations. In addition, our results suggest that it is possible to design a content creation system to promote quality learning through microlearning that can be transferred to other subjects, at least in the Bachelor's Degree in Nursing.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10639-023-11904-4.

Culinary Solitude in the Diet of People with Functional Diversity

This qualitative ethnographic study identifies how problems in the feeding process of a group of people with functional diversity influence different eating situations. The study, which was carried out in the Autonomous Community of Castilla La Mancha, Spain, is based on interviews conducted at the headquarters of the different participating associations for functionally diverse people, at the participants’ homes, and in public spaces. The study included 27 subjects aged between 18–75 years. Their functional diversity had caused significant changes in their sociability, particularly in contexts associated with food consumption. The analysis identified three main themes: social ghettoisation and culinary loneliness; stigma, shame, feeling like a burden, and loneliness; and exclusion or self-exclusion at the dining table. Our participants’ narratives underscored the importance of acknowledging the significance of changes in eating-related sociability due to functional diversity. For the study subjects, grief, loneliness, and shame contributed to disassociating food consumption from social celebrations, withdrawing from restaurant meals, or conversations while eating to avoid other people’s stares.

Eating experiences and quality of life in patients with larynx cancer in Spain. A qualitative study

Purpose

This paper aims at describing the eating experience of people diagnosed with and treated for laryngeal cancer. Going beyond the mere conceptualization of “after-effect” or the quantification of the disease’s impact on the basis of standardized questionnaires, we present a qualitative analysis of the narratives of such experiences.

Methods

Ethnographic study. Data is obtained from conversations, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and written documents. A discourse analysis of the narrative information was conducted, with process coding and using the constant comparative method, inductive content analysis, category analysis, units of meaning associated with each other, and triangulation.

Results

The impact of cancer on eating processes is not limited to nutrition, but also affects the social and cultural value of food, which is put into question. The symbolic and social values which accompany the traditional way of eating are modified, which is connected with impaired quality of life.

Conclusions

The impact on the eating process and its relationship with quality-of-life impairment are clear and connect with the importance of eating ways in culture and social organization. Greater attention should be paid to these contexts in clinical practice, which can affect even more than the impact on communicative processes.

Rationale and Methods of Evaluation for ACHO, A New Virtual Assistant to Improve Therapeutic Adherence in Rural Elderly Populations: A User-Driven Living Lab

Low therapeutic adherence is a concern for health professionals as it decreases therapeutic efficiency while increasing costs, especially in elderly populations. To increase therapeutic adherence in elderly populations, the technology applied in the medical devices that are used must be adapted to improve usability. This paper outlines the rationale behind, and methods applied to assess the usability of, ACHO (Assistant on Care and Health Offline), a voice assistant that provides elderly patients with reminders of medical appointments to attend and when they need to take their medication. This work is a descriptive, cross-sectional, observational study, and will include a three-phase (analysis, testing and refinement) multidimensional usability analysis of an initial prototype, in the setting of a user-driven Living Lab, which enables the needs and characteristics of the end users to be identified and incorporated into the prototype with each iteration, in which a multidisciplinary team of researchers and users will participate as co-creators. This methodology will allow us to develop a better prototype, increasing usability and, thus, increasing therapeutic adherence.

Treatment Adherence in Chronic Conditions during Ageing: Uses, Functionalities, and Cultural Adaptation of the Assistant on Care and Health Offline (ACHO) in Rural Areas

The increasingly common scenario of an ageing population is related to a rise in the prevalence of problems associated with chronic conditions and comorbidities. Polypharmacy is frequent among this population, and it is a situation that can create medication management and adherence issues. This article introduces the features and functionalities of a voice assistant (Assistant on Health and Care Offline, ACHO) that aims to facilitate treatment adherence among elderly adults. Specifically adapted for its use in rural contexts, it does not require an Internet connection. Its development consisted of two stages: a first stage of problem diagnosis, in which the classic tools of ethnographic fieldwork were used, and a second stage of design implementing methodologies developed by Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) programmes. The main design characteristic of this new digital care system is that it is adapted to the needs of its end-users. It includes features such as voice customisation and the personal identification of medication, it can be connected to other digital devices, and information is introduced and supervised by healthcare professionals. These custom features introduce a safer medication administration procedure, improve supervision strategies, and increase patients' trust in the prescription process.

Family Orchards and Health-Related Quality of Life in the Elderly. A Protocol for a Study in Las Hurdes (Spain) Based on an Ethnographic Approach

Demographic evolution is resulting on an aged population increment in Spain. This growth has been more relevant in rural areas, where the population has traditionally lived under hard socio-economic conditions and leveraging the natural resources such as food from family orchards to survive. Studies that have investigated the possibilities and uses of these traditional family orchards today in relation to health-related quality of life in the elderly are scarce. Based on a previous ethnography, this mixed research aims to describe a protocol that will evaluate the effects of the use of traditional family orchards as a daily resource on fitness and quality of life of the elderly population in Las Hurdes (Spain). Body composition, fitness, mental health, health-related quality of life, and activity-related behaviors of participants will be assessed. The outcomes of this study might enable us to design further tailored physical exercise-based interventions using family orchards as an adequate resource to improve the health-related quality of life and fitness of the elderly in rural areas. In addition, the study detailed here might also be applied to other similar rural areas in Spain and worldwide.